Грег Иган - Permutation City

Zemansky said firmly, "The TVC grid is decaying. The only way to be safe is to start again. Pack everything into a new Garden-of-Eden configuration, and launch Elysium again."

Repetto said, "If that's possible. If the infinite is still possible." Born into a universe without limits, without death, he seemed transfixed by the Lambertians' verdict.

A red glow appeared in the distance; it looked like a giant sphere of luminous rubble. As Maria watched, it brightened, then broke apart into a pattern of lights, linked by fine silver threads. A neon labyrinth. A fairground at night, from the air. The colors were wrong, but the shape was unmistakable: it was a software map of the City. The only thing missing was the highway, the data link to the hub.

Before Maria could say a word, the pattern continued to rearrange itself. Dazzling pinpricks of light appeared within a seemingly random subset of the processes, then moved together, clustering into a tightly linked core. Around them, a dimmer shell formed by the remaining software settled into a symmetrical configuration. The system looked closed, self-contained.

They watched it recede, in silence.

31

Peer turned and looked behind him. Kate had stopped dead in the middle of the walkway. All the energy seemed to drain out of her; she put her face in her hands, then sank to her knees.

She said flatly, "They've gone, haven't they? They must have discovered us . . . and now this is their punishment. They've left the City running . . . but they've deserted it."

"We don't know that."

She shook her head impatiently. "They will have made another version -- purged of contamination -- for their own use. And we'll never see them again." A trio of smartly dressed puppets approached, and walked straight through her, smiling and talking among themselves.

Peer walked over to her and sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. He'd already sent software probes hunting for any trace of the Elysians, without success -- but Kate had insisted on scouring a reconstruction of the City, on foot, as if their own eyes might magically reveal some sign of habitation that the software had missed.

He said gently, "There are a thousand other explanations. Someone might have . . . I don't know . . . created a new environment so astonishing that they've all gone off to explore it. Fashions sweep Elysium like plagues -- but this is their meeting place, their center of government, their one piece of solid ground. They'll be back."

Kate uncovered her face and gave him a pitying look. "What kind of fashion would tempt every Elysian out of the City, in a matter of seconds? And where did they hear about this great work of art which they had to rush off and experience? I monitor all the public networks; there was nothing special leading up to the exodus. But if they'd discovered us -- if they knew we were listening in -- then they wouldn't have used the public channels to announce the fact, would they?"

Peer couldn't see why not; if the Elysians had found them, they'd also know that he and Kate were powerless to influence the City -- let alone its inhabitants -- in any way. There was no reason to arrange a secret evacuation. He found it hard enough to believe that anyone would want to punish two harmless stowaways -- but it was harder still to accept that they'd been "exiled" without being dragged through an elaborate ritual of justice -- or at the very least, publicly lambasted for their crime, before being formally sentenced. The Elysians never missed the opportunity for a bit of theater; swift, silent retribution just didn't ring true.

He said, "If the data link to the hub was broken, unintentionally --"

Kate was scornful. "It would have been fixed by now."

"Perhaps. That depends on the nature of the problem." He hesitated. "Those four weeks I was missing . . . we still don't know if I was cut off from you by a fault in the software at our level -- or whether the problem was somewhere deeper. If there are faults appearing in the City itself, one of them might have severed the links to the rest of Elysium. And it might take some time for the problem to be pinned down; anything that's taken seven thousand years to reveal itself could turn out to be elusive."

Kate was silent for a while, then she said, "There's an easy way to find out if you're right. Increase our slowdown -- keep increasing it -- and see what happens. Program our exoselves to break in and switch us back to the normal rate if there's any sign of the Elysians . . . but if that doesn't happen, keep ploughing ahead into the future, until we're both convinced that we've waited long enough."

Peer was surprised; he liked the idea -- but he'd imagined that Kate would have preferred to prolong the uncertainty. He wasn't sure if it was a good sign or not. Did it mean she wanted to make a clean break from the Elysians? To banish any lingering hope of their return, as rapidly as possible? Or was it proof of just how desperately she wanted them back?

He said, "Are you sure you want to do that?"

"I'm sure. Will you help me program it? You're the expert at this kind of thing."

"Here and now?"

"Why not? The whole point is to save ourselves from waiting."

Peer created a control panel in the air in front of them, and together they set up the simple time machine.

Kate hit the button.

Slowdown one hundred. The puppets using the walkway accelerated into invisible streaks. Slowdown ten thousand. Night and day chugged by, then flashed, then flickered -- slowdown one million -- then merged. Peer glanced up to watch the arc of the sun's path slide up and down the sky with the City's mock seasons, ever faster, until it smeared into a dull glowing band. Slowdown one billion. The view was perfectly static, now. There were no long-term fake astronomical cycles programmed into the virtual sky. No buildings rose, or crumbled. The empty, invulnerable City had nothing to do but repeat itself: to exist, and exist, and exist. Slowdown one trillion.

Peer turned to Kate. She sat in an attentive pose, head up, eyes averted, as if she was listening for something. The voice of an Elysian hyperintelligence, the endpoint of a billion years of self-directed mutation, reaching out to encompass the whole TVC grid? Discovering their fate? Judging them, forgiving them, and setting them free?

Peer said, "I think you've won the bet. They're not coming back." He glanced at the control panel, and felt a stab of vertigo; more than a hundred trillion years of Standard Time had elapsed. But if the Elysians had cut all ties with them, Standard Time was meaningless. Peer reached out to halt their acceleration, but Kate grabbed him by the wrist.

She said quietly, "Why bother? Let it climb forever. It's only a number, now."

"Yes." He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

"One instruction per century. One instruction per millennium. And it makes no difference. You've finally got your way."

He cradled Kate in his arms, while Elysian aeons slipped away. He stroked her hair, and watched the control panel carefully. Only one number was rising; everything but the strange fiction of Elapsed Standard Time stayed exactly the same.

No longer tied to the growth of the Elysians, the City remained unchanged, at every level. And that meant, in turn, that the infrastructure which Carter had woven into the software for them had also ceased to expand. The simulated "computer" which ran them, composed of the City's scattered redundancies, was now a finite "machine," with a finite number of possible states.

They were mortal again.

It was a strange feeling. Peer looked around the empty walkway, looked down at the woman in his arms, feeling like he'd woken from a long dream -- but when he searched himself for some hint of a waking life to frame it, there was nothing. David Hawthorne was a dead stranger. The Copy who'd toured the Slow Clubs with Kate was as distant as the carpenter, the mathematician, the librettist.